WARDEN PELOSI

November 10, 2009

Failure to buy health insurance in the just-passed health care bill could get you five years in jail with a $250,000 fine. How can violating a law that's unconstitutional be a felony, asks Investor's Business Daily (IBD)?

The passage last Saturday night of the House health care measure by a fragile 220-215 margin may well prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. In polls, townhall meetings and tea parties, Americans have shown they don't want a "reform" that costs a staggering $1.2 trillion yet fails to meet the left's desire of insuring all the uninsured. And they certainly don't want a bill that threatens them with incarceration if they don't comply, says IBD.

This monstrosity would raise insurance premiums and taxes to prohibitive levels and add unconscionably to the national debt.

It will force physicians to leave the medical profession in droves, exacerbating an already perilous doctor shortage; this and so-called cost controls will lead to rationing.

The mechanisms for deciding who gets what, if any, care -- and even what care will be available -- are already in place; some, like a cost-effectiveness board, slipped into the failed stimulus bill.

Under sections 7201 and 7203 of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's bill, Americans who don't maintain acceptable health insurance coverage and who choose not to pay a fine/tax of up to 2.5 percent of income are subject to fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.

As Dave Camp (R-Mich.), ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, observed, "This is the ultimate example of the Democrats' command-and-control style of governing -- buy what we tell you or go to jail."

Evading the income tax is punishable by jail time. But the income tax required a constitutional amendment; it was not imposed by judicial fiat, notes IBD.